Step Five First Diagonal Strands

In this step, you will weave strands diagonally across the seat, beginning at the back right corner.

Insert a new strand in the hole at the back right corner and peg it. To check the track of this strand, first lay it across the seat in a straight diagonal line. Note the hole it touches at the front and put a peg in this hole as a marker.

In this weaving, the new strand will go over the pairs of side-to-side strands, and go under the pairs of back-to-front strands. After you start weaving, you'll find it becomes easy to identify the different pairs. Just start slowly and check each pair of strands carefully. Before you have finished the first diagonal strand, you will have gained the knack of weaving under and over the right pairs.

After weaving in the first diagonal strand, move to the hole to the left and weave the second strand parallel to the first, following the same procedure: under the back-to-front strands and over the side-to-side strands. Continue weaving until all diagonal strands have been woven in. Occasionally wet down the cane already in the chair with your sponge to make the weaving easier.

Remember to check the track of each

This is the seat at the completion of Step Four, with two sets of strands in running vertically and two running horizontally Note that we have not yet put in the single strands near the very front or at the last row in back.

Step Five has progressed and the fifth diagonal strand is about to be woven in. Note the holes in the lower left. It was necessary to weave the same strand in and out of the same hole in both the first and second holes. This was done to keep the strands aligned and olten is necessary at corners. When doing this, anchor the strand around a cross piece of cane under the seat before coming back out the same hole

Notice that as we weave, the pattern of the cane is becoming visible and regular, aligning itself

diagonal strand before you begin to weave it. Sooner or later, you will find one that doesn't match the hole at the other end properly. The solution to this is to use the open hole twice to keep your rows straight.

This is what will happen: you will weave one diagonal to its hole but will find that, when you move to the next hole, the new track is out of place. You must skip a row to keep the diagonal lines parallel. However, you don't really want to skip any rows. So you tie off the strand you just inserted, and instead of moving to the next hole, you bring the strand back up through the same hole. Now you weave the strand along its proper track. This usually occurs near the corners and creates no problem in the weaving if you follow these instructions.

Incidentally, when performing diagonal weaving, you handle the single strands near the edges just as if they were pairs of strands — over the side-to-side and under the back-to-front. The only difference is that you are dealing with one strand instead of two.

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